The Order of the Day

Last writing meeting at the Applebox a week ago, Julia and I discussed the prioritization of writing in our lives. I thought about that discussion a lot during the week and particularly in these past few hours as I engaged in the sweet suburban puttering of a sunny day. The patio has been swept, the Monster Mobile vacuumed, cashmere sweaters are soaking in the sink, dog towels tumbling in the dryer, Rex was walked (I think it's courting season for hawks--we watched three braiding up the sky above the field, circling higher and higher…we turned away for a moment and they vanished) and he now basks in the sunshine on the deck. I should be working on a new essay, or at least revising an old one, bring it up to submission snuff, but all I can think about is ripping out and redoing the side-seams on my dress and ironing the fabric that my mom brought down for me (the fabric pile is growing precariously tall--how did that happen in just under two months?) while listening to Patrick Tull read Patrick O'Brian. And I know that I'm blogging as a way to trick my brain into thinking I've been writing and so make me feel like I've accomplished "real" writing. Well, I have time for both sewing and writing today, we'll see how it goes.

One activity that has been sucking up way too much of my time lately, and I've been in denial about it: shopping. I do just too much wandering around in stores and poking around the racks and shelves. It's almost like TV--a pleasant way to put my brain on hold, but I don't really accomplish much. Yesterday for instance: I went hunting for a new sweatshirt at the mall. There is a bit of social anthropology study that I enjoy, watching the kids cruising for friends and "love," observing family dynamics as they shop together. But what did I get for two and a half hours of mall scraping? A pair of red boots ($8, how could I resist?) and two tshirts--and no sweatshirt. I could've just hit a store that I know would've had plenty to choose from, like Sportmart, but no…So there was a chunk of my afternoon gone with little to show for it. I have so many creative things that I want to work on, I really need to get that impulse under control and stop complaining about not being able to write.

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My mom and stepdad came down on Friday evening. They took us out to dinner at a really good Chinese place that night. We did some tandem shopping yesterday and mom picked out a new digital camera in time for their anniversary trip to China in May. Here's her first digital portrait!

Gray kitty in the sun
Originally uploaded by suzipaw.

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Have I mentioned M's dreams lately? The sleeping ones, not the waking ones. Sure there are the standard where's-that-thing-I-need-to-take-my-test scenarios. But there are others, a bit more disturbing. For instance, in one, Rex has been carried off by a hawk only to be dashed, bloodied and broken to the ground; in another he's dragged around his step-brother's headless body. I had a sort of nightmare myself last night--at one of our conferences, I was confronted by an obese PR flack who grew larger and larger until she smothered me. Hm, what would Freud say? (Think I'll start a bracelet campaign, WWFS.)

OK, enough of this bloggygagging, time to continue to the activities of the day.